y that his chair rattled. Simeon
Caley lifted the heavy coffee pot for Lettice.

Mrs. Caley's service was abrupt, efficient; she set down plates of hot
bread with a clatter; she rattled the stove lids from without, and
complained of General Jackson, faithfully following her every movement.

Sim Caley wielded an adroit knife; but, under the extraordinary pressure
of this bountiful repast, Rutherford Berry easily outdistanced him. He
consumed such unlimited amounts that he gained the audible displeasure of
his wife.

"You're not a camel," she truthfully observed, "you don't have to fill up
for a week; you get something home. What Lettice'll think of you I can't
make out."

Substantial sections of pie were dispatched. Barnwell K., valiantly
endeavoring to emulate his father, struggled manfully; he poked the last
piece of crust into his mouth with his fingers. Then, in a shrill aside,
he inquired, "Will Aunt Lettice have the baby while we're here." His
mother's hand rang like a shot on his face, and he responded instantly
with a yell of appalling volume.

Lettice's cup struck sharply upon its saucer. The delicate Rose flushed
appropriately, painfully. The culprit was hauled, incontinently, dolefully
wailing, to bed. The three men preserved an embarrassed silence. Finally
Gordon said, "Have a cigar." His brother-in-law responded with alacrity,
but Sim preferred his plug tobacco, and Gordon Makimmon twisted a
cigarette. Sim and Rutherford were patently uncomfortable amid the
formality of the dining room; and, at Gordon's suggestion, trooped with
relief out to the shedlike stable. There they examined critically the two
horses. Facing the stalls was an open space, and on boxes and the remnant
of a chair they found places and smoked and spat informally.

"You could study a life on women," Rutherford Berry pronounced, "and
never come to any satisfaction. It seems to me the better they be the more
sharp-like they get. There's your sister, Gord--the way she does about the
house, and with all the children to tend, is a caution to Dunkards. She
does all you could ask and again. But it just seems she can't be pleasant
with it. Now there's Nickles, next place to me, his old woman's not worth
a pinch of powder, but she is the nicest, easiest spoken body you'd meet
in a day on a horse. You mind Effie when she was young, Gord--she just
trailed song all over the house, but it wasn't hardly a year before she
got penetrating as a muske